This Love Will Be Your Downfall
by liesincrayon
Summary: Eames/Arthur- "When Eames first meets Arthur, the man to come is still a boy, all sharp angles growing into himself." I wrote this all in an MSN window, you wont want to read it. :D Warning- No Beta, Language.


When Eames first meets Arthur, the man to come is still a boy, all sharp angles growing into himself, he is young, too young to be a College Student, too young to be hoarding all these details for a joint Academic-Military project. The Cobbs treat him like a son, so Eames keeps his distance as best as possible. He's here on loan and isn't supposed to be messing about with children. But he cant help it, because out of all of the academia and gunmen, Arthur is the one with the quirky sense of humour. With the hair that falls into his eyes, the one Eames would like to get high with, talk about the details of English Lit or Frank Lloyd Wright, or whatever the fuck it is Arthur is studying because Eames still isn't really sure. Just knows Arthur is ace at the computers and the little things.

But then the first JOB after all the details and all the pre-work, and Arthur's got a haircut, and a suit, and is still the same person, smooth and easy to tease and retorts with the skill of the slacker looking hacker who was Cobb's little Golden Boy and Eames is thrown, reeling, trying to reconcile how he could have read Arthur -so fucking wrong-.

Things go pear-shapped for the first (but not the last) time, and Arthur, and -guns- and Eames at first is panicing because Arthur is young and a student of computer sciences or getting a doctorate on the dewey decimal system, or something overwhelmingly boring to do with maths and ordered databases. So he thinks, fuck, I have to protect this tender underage piece of ass I want to hit, but then Arthur is standing in the middle of a piled circle of projections, a scratch torn on his cheek, eyes blankly apathetic and rechambering the gun. And all Eames can think is "competent".

So that and the suits later, sets Eames up for years of trying desperately to figure out who the fuck Arthur really is, which mask is closer to reality, when all he really has to do is ask. Not knowing that by not asking, he's really pushing Arthur further into paranoia about his real intentions.

It's all Arthur though, there aren't really many masks aside from the lack of trust that is an inherent down-fall when you work in a field where people steal from your dreams. He cut his hair, slicked it back, because he couldn't afford to look uprofessional and hurt his chances at recognition, but at home he doesn't bother to slick it back. Sometimes, sometimes he still wears his old college hoodie when he's back in New York and has to go out too early in the morning to buy something to eat because he never has anything in the fridgerator, and cannot cook for shit, because he was always too busy growing up to learn how.

But one day Eames' teasing will get a bit too close to the bone, and when he looks over, not knowing, never knowing, expecting to see Arthur's frown, or a teasing smirk, he's just going to see that kid. The kid with the unbrushed hair, the ratty hoodie pockets stucked full of notes written on napkins. Those scary-competent eyes bracketed by wear but still the same, open wide with curiosity and just a little trepidation over this curious foreigner who calls him pet names and touches him unwarranted, elbow, hair, shoulder. He'll see the kid stairing out at him and know how wrong he's been all along, how dense, because there never were any masks, just history, and when he realizes this Eames will know he's fucked. Because he's figured Arthur out, finally, and the cost was falling in love.

So Eames stops touching him, stops calling him pet names and teasing him, and goading him, and dancing their little dance, because it's wrong now, because it means too much now. Now that he knows it's not just about seeing what Arthur is like under it all, unfurling him like a piece of delecious parchment. No now it means something more, and Eames is good at seduction, at luring and getting and hurting. He's good at leaving, because that is what he does, he devours the details, takes what he can, runs like a thief into the night. But not Arthur, never to Arthur, who stitched up his arm after a bar brawl turned bad that first job, back when Eames had still been MI5. Not Arthur who dispensed pain meds and ice packs when Eames had taken a tumble on survailance their fifth job together and nearly broken his leg. He cant leave Arthur like the trail of lovers not-lovers he's had, and he's gone so long, followed and read, and compiled people together for so long, their lies, their secrets, that he isn't sure he could do anything else. Because love is a fairytale, the kind that isn't real, but fuck, only love can hurt this much. Can hurt like a knife twisted by Dom's bastard dead-wife's projection stuck straight in his gut. Hurt like that when Arthur looks at him in confussion when Eames hugs everyone in the room when they meet up for their next job but -him-.

When Arthur corners him after the job, Eames regrets not clearing out imediattly, but he'd left things in the hotel, and then Arthur is there, in his room. Those eyes, the pout of thin lips, and all Eames can think about is that kid, peering at him over the back of a laptop screen, curious, open. Arthur is too open, and now Eames understands how easy it would to hurt him, and the twist is back.

"What did I do?" Arthur asks, curious, not hurt, his eyes open, calculating, waiting for the details, the information he needs to compile like a computer all these things that haven't been adding up, and Eames has no idea what to say to him. I didn't know this would happen, I would have done it anyway, you still fascinate me, I would break you apart. Eames is a disaster, gambles with everything, waits for the wreck and dreams bigger. Arthur is calculations and worry, energy thrumming under it all, care, compassion, taking care of everyone, drawing the fire, keeping them safe. "Nothing, I've just been out of sorts." The second he says it, he knows what it really feels like to have a broken heart. Closed off dark brown eyes, Arthur read his poker face. Lie, lie, lie, it blares at him.

"Fuck no, please." Eames is begging even as Arthur is turning from him to leave, leave him in the shattered glass of his lies. "Don't Arthur." When he grabs Arthur's arm, it's the first time he's touched him in months, it's worse than he could have ever dreamt it to be. Arthur's sleeve is rolled up, his skin deleriously warm under the palm of Eames' hand. "Do you ever come up for air?" Arthur growls, but he doesn't pull his arm away, it is more than Eames deserves.

"You didn't do anything Arthur, god, you've never done anything wrong, it's..." It's the whole situation, it's how Eames realized he was drowning too late to even want to change it. Too late to want it to have ever been changed. He cannot imagine how Cobb can move, if Arthur had jumped, he would have followed, children, resposobilities be damned, because -Arthur- with his intricacies and how could he be expected to live without having this man in front of him to figure out every day. "My longest relationship was two months." Eames realizes too late Arthur wasn't apart of the conversation he'd just started out loud.

"You didn't do anything wrong Arthur, I realized I have. I realized I want you, and hell, I do not deserve you, and-" He's back in full force, that terribly competent teen with his gun and the dead around him, pressing into Eames' personal space, crowding into him, and Eames wants to sink into that heat more than anything he's ever wanted before. "That's what this is about? Really, now After all this time, you don't think I -know-, you don't think I've already figured that out, risk assesment, I'll soak up the collateral." Eames is reeling, his hands clutching to Arthur, trying to figure out these words, the meanings. "You fucking terrify me Eames." He realizes Arthur is shuddering against him, a wound up ball of energy and flight all chained down, pulled closer into Eames. "Fuck you Eames, you don't get to hurt me without ever actually doing anything."

Eames is pretty sure he initiated the kiss, and as he sinks into the feel of Arthur's skin, he knows Arthur has been the same all along, it's -him- that his changed. He wants now, wants this, wants everything, with an intensity that shakes him down to the core. He's willing to gamble it all now, it's worth it.


End file.
